This invention relates to a novel clock face construction and method useful for the reading and teaching of time.
Anyone attempting to teach someone how to tell time using a traditional analog clock face usually finds it to be a complicated, time consuming task. One complication occurs when either one or both hands of the clock are not pointing directly to a numeral or numeral index mark (hereinafter called a border line). Another complication is due to the tradition of having the hour and minute scales combined; separating them makes the time easier to describe. Other devices designed to convey the passage of time require such abstract concepts as "quarter to", "quarter after", and "half past" to indicate passage of time before and after the hour. These terms add to learner confusion.
The prior art is replete with time telling teaching devices. U.S. Pat. No. 3,131,489 shows a time teaching device where hour indicating numbers are displaced from their hour scale positions to new positions on a minute scale. Other time teaching devices utilize color as a means fo relating the hour hand to the minute hand. This is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,124,945. There, the clock face is divided into twelve 30 degree arc segments that correspond to hour numerals by color. U.S. Pat. No. 3,608,214 utilizes color or texture to identify sectored indicators varied in size indicating passage of time before and after the hour.
None of the aforesaid devices have the advantage of the present invention which places the clock face hour numerals and minute numerals within sector shapes having common border lines so that the hour hand and minute hand clearly indicate the correct hour and minute even when these hands point to a space between two numerals or directly on a sector border line. This advantageous result is achieved by graphically skewing the sector shapes.
The skewed sector shape is a function of enclosing each hour and minute numeral at its traditional location but within a shape that will always show which hour and minute the hour hand and minute hand is pointing to at any time throughout the passage of time. Other U.S. Patents divide the clock face into equal sections but in so doing, either move the numerals from their traditional locations as found on the traditional analog clock, in order to fit the numerals into the sections, or the numerals are placed in their traditional analog clock location but are not set completely inside the boundaries of their respective sections which causes confusion.
Also, the present invention minimizes the possibility of the user misreading the position of the hour hand or the minute hand in relation to the numbered sectors. This is accomplished by making the surface underneath the rotating hour and minute hands lower than the adjacent surfaces upon which the hour and minute numeral containing sector shapes appear. As a result, the hour and minute hands are then on the same levels as are the respective printed numerals contained in the sector shaped scales. This eliminates parallax that otherwise occurs when the hour and minute hands are mounted above the printed surface to which they are supposed to point.